It’s Time to Lead
It’s time to lead…
from a place of radical responsibility.
While there is always a hunger in the world for real leadership (from wherever it springs up), this is an unusually intense time we’re in—global pandemic, widespread economic disruption, an extreme political landscape of distortion and division…
In this time, it’s natural to feel a whole range of emotion from grief to anger to despair—and sometimes to spiral down with our feelings. It’s also natural and beautifully human to respond with all kinds of generosity, opening of hearts and minds, and heroic action.
To be aware of the full range of feeling, thought, and action available to us—and to be both conscious and creative about the choices we’re making, and aware and intentional about their impact—this is a way of leading—or perhaps more accurately, a way of being—that I’ve come to refer to as “radical responsibility.”
It’s “radical” not because it’s extreme, but because it’s a fundamentally different kind of responsibility. It’s not job description or work load or burden or expectation on our shoulders. It is rather a persistent silently-spoken-to-ourselves invitation to make our presence in the world more creatively powerful. It is a kind of fierce love for life, and devotion to what matters to us in life. It is life-affirming rather than life-diminishing. It is heart and mind opening. It is being committed to our presence bringing out the best in others.
When living from a place of radical responsibility, we ask ourselves questions like:
How can I leave something positive in my wake each day in a way that feels meaningful?
What does it look like to consciously create in this moment versus unconsciously react?
How can I experience life deeply and richly, and live and work full-out, while not burning out?
These are the kinds of questions I’ll be opening up in a series of thirteen posts (starting with this one) meant to contribute to you finding your own deeply compelling answers. The series is based on my book, A Sacred Trust: The Four Disciplines of Conscious Leadership. I’ll be inviting you into a journey of self-inquiry, self-awareness, and self-authoring—over a period of six months—to further develop your unique and powerful leadership presence in the world.
The personal journey of being more creatively powerful in your life and work—and I believe the key to truly leading during this intense time, or any time—starts with this radical responsibility way of being—which is at the center of this wheel of twelve “power pathways” connected to the four disciplines of inspiration, integrity, courage, and clarity.
Questions to ponder, and if you have a journaling practice, to write about…
How do you want others to experience you?
How do you want others to experience themselves in your presence?
What is one change you could make to be more creatively powerful in your life?
More to come…
The next twelve posts (one on each of twelve Power Pathways)—coming roughly every two weeks—will help you connect with your unique expression of radical responsibility—help you connect with who you truly are and what your life is most essentially about.
You can check in with my LinkedIn page every couple of weeks, or have these posts delivered to your email by going to my website and signing up.